Each household and professional laundry machine (hereinafter, machine, for the sake of conciseness)—such as washing machine, washer/dryer, dryer typically comprises, among other components, an inner compartment (including a, e.g. rotating, housing drum or simply drum) that can be accessed by a user for loading the laundry to be treated (e.g., to be washed and/or dried) and unloading the laundry after the intended treatment has been accomplished.
As known, such machines, whether of the front loading type or of the top loading type, are such that some drum areas are scarcely visible for the user when accessing the drum during loading/unloading operations of the laundry, which makes such loading/unloading operations difficult, and hence prone to errors, or even dangerous for the user. In fact, when experiencing low visibility conditions within the drum, the user may be compelled to uncomfortably reach deep into the drum, e.g., for ascertaining a correct loading of the laundry (for instance, an even distribution of the laundry before the beginning of the treatment thereof) and/or a complete unloading of the laundry (for instance, so as to avoid laundry from being unintentionally left or forgotten within the drum at the end of the treatment thereof), which also exposes the user to injury.
Moreover, for machines wherein the drum is visible from the external during operation thereof (e.g. by see-through members, such as a glass porthole), it could be convenient for the user to have the drum illuminated during the treatment of the laundry, so as to be able to at least roughly ascertain the correctness of the treatment (e.g. by visibly and directly checking whether some treatment phases, such as soaping, rinsing and the like actually take place or not).
In order to meet such requirements, some of last-generation machines are provided with a lighting apparatus, the latter substantially comprising one or more lighting devices—such as halogen, incandescent or LED (“Light Emitting Diode”) lamps—acting as corresponding light sources for illuminating the drum, and a power feeding assembly—including electronic circuitry, such as rectifiers and controllers, and electrical wires—for generally feeding an operative electric power (from a power source of the machine) to each lighting device for energization thereof.
Most of solutions known in the art, in particular most of front-loading washing machines, use a substantially common approach according to which the lighting devices are arranged at a position of the machine outside the drum, with each lighting device properly oriented towards the access opening of the drum for allowing the emitted light to illuminate as much drum area as possible.
Another approach on which other solutions are based provides that the lighting devices are arranged within the drum. For example, EP 2 094 899 B1 relates to a washer/dryer comprising a drum wherein the laundry is placed, at least one drum baffle disposed in the drum for turning over and tumbling the laundry, and one or more light sources disposed inside the drum baffle for illuminating the interior of the drum by transmitting light from inside the drum baffles towards the outside.